David Hicks' journey

Finally, David Hicks’ Guantanamo: My Journey is soon to be released. It's an ironic coincidence that John Howard’s autobiography is also scheduled for release.

They've been in the news together before, although Howard delegated most of the dirty work there to Alexander Downer, and in the long run David Hicks will no doubt win out again. As before, he should steal the show because no-one can drown out truth.

Mike Carlton was right to launch a pre-emptive strike against any attempt to prosecute Hicks under the Australian Proceeds of Crime Act. Not only would that be outrageous, but most people would regard it as "multiplying outrages", an outrage upon an outrage.

Apart from seriously misjudging the public mood, it would be foolhardy for a Government held together by safety pins even to seriously entertain the idea, particularly in light of the ongoing bloodbath in Afghanistan.

I owe a lot to Hicks. Virtually every aspect of the exercise of Western power since 9/11 disturbed me, but it appalled me that the perpetrators of an illegal invasion could dare to assert the authority to charge anyone who resisted them in the country they invaded with being terrorists, and it appalled me that the "Coalition Forces" caused suspects to disappear and be tortured. But when Hicks turned up in American custody it disgusted me that Howard, Downer and Ruddock could so glibly subject an Australian citizen to processes so devoid of any semblance of fairness, justice or the rule of law, and continue to do so when virtually every other country said "enough" and got its people out.

It was his plight that prompted me to write and publish my first article, and to participate in the Stop the War Coalition street protests — my first protests, as well — calling for his return to Australia. I think I was and still am fairly conservative. Certainly I like to conserve things, particularly two important things called justice and truth.

So in the lead up to the much anticipated release of Hicks’ book I’d thought I’d take the opportunity to reminisce.

Do you recall the Human Rights Watch April 2005 reportGetting away with Torture? It said:

...As this report shows, evidence is mounting that high-ranking civilian and military leaders – including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top commander in Iraq, and Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – made decisions and issued policies that facilitated serious and widespread violations of the law. The circumstances strongly suggest that they either knew or should have known that such violations took place because of their actions. There is also mounting data that, when presented with evidence that abuse was in fact taking place, they failed to act to stem the abuse…

Do you remember former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s Chancellor's Human Rights Lecture at Melbourne University? He repeated the comments made by John Howard on SBS World News on 11 November 2005 that "the Government is committed to the Military Commission trial. If David Hicks was brought back to Australia he would go free. He could not be charged under Australian law. It is not our intention to do that."

Mr Fraser pointed out that that represented the abandonment of an Australian citizen who had not breached an Australian law; that it assumed that David Hicks was guilty; that the presumption of innocence was irrelevant; that it denied the right to a fair trial; and that the Government had turned itself into prosecutor and judge of David Hicks, before even the process of the Military Commission, which has since been described by former prosecutors as being "rigged", was fully underway.

Do you recall that in August 2004 David Hicks provided an affidavit to the US military that gave a disturbing account of systemic torture and unjustified detention?

In it, Hicks describes how he had been beaten before, during and after interrogations; randomly hit over an eight hour session while blindfolded and handcuffed; struck with hands, fists and other objects (including rifle butts); had his head rammed into asphalt several times (while blindfolded); struck while under the influence of sedatives that were forced upon him by injection; forced to run in leg shackles that regularly ripped the skin off his ankles; deprived of sleep as a matter of policy; and held in a solitary cell, without being allowed to exercise in sunlight, from July 2003 until March 2004.

No doubt it was the airing of the ABC's Four Corners program in 2005 that prompted Downer to give an "assurance" that Australian officials would investigate claims that Hicks was sexually abused by American soldiers. Downer told the ABC that "our officials have had many meetings with him...and on no occasion has he ever raised such a concern...look we have had claims that he was tortured, we've had two American teams investigate those claims and they have come back with nil returns."

Remember how the Howard Government supported the US in its use of Guantanamo Bay despite Amnesty International and UN experts being strongly opposed to it because the interrogation techniques authorised for use violated the UN Convention against Torture?

Or the Howard Government’s backing of the Guantanamo military commissions because in its view David Hicks should have to “face justice”? Or the political panic to have Hicks formally charged after he’d already spent five years in Guantanamo without charge?

At the time the United Kingdom's Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, had said that the camp’s reliance on military tribunals did not meet the British commitment to the principle of “a fair trial in accordance with international

standards". Spain’s Baltasar Garzóncalled on the United States to shut down this prison, as “an insult to countries that respect laws.”

Do you recall that after the June 2006 US Supreme Court ruled that the military commissions set up by the Bush Administration to try prisoners, including David Hicks, at Guantanamo Bay were illegal and must be abandoned, we saw the removal of David Hicks Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) from the Attorney General’s website? Fortunately the text from the FAQs was posted to the Fair Go For David website and revealed for all the untenable stance taken by the Howard Government.

Hicks was detained by the United States Armed forces in December 2001 and arrived at Guantanamo Bay in January 2002. Six years later he was released on terms he was blackmailed into accepting. The Howard Government chose to abandon the rule of law and sacrifice that one Australian citizen. David Hicks remained in detention, without trial, in Guantanamo Bay because our Government decided to leave him there, even though Howard acknowledged that he would be walking free if he were repatriated.